The finalists of Hack the North 2025!

Ever wanted to build apps that react in real-time and make a genuine difference for students? Join the AWS Campus Champions hackathon track! DynamoDB is Amazon's serverless NoSQL database that powers millions of apps around the world. Now imagine being able to capture every single change to that data as it happens - that's what DynamoDB Streams does. In just 36 hours, we invite students to build something meaningful with DynamoDB Streams to better the student experience - like a real-time chat app where messages from co-op advisors appear instantly, a collaborative white board that syncs between users for interview prep, or any innovation that addresses real challenges that students face today.

Whether you're a beginner or a tenured hacker, this is your chance to work with the same tech that powers massive platforms while building something for students. Are you ready to make that impact?

Cerebras is redefining AI inference. Unlike GPU-based providers, we build our own chips, designed from the ground up for large language model inference. The result: unprecedented speed of up to 3,000 tokens per second.

This track rewards the most creative and impactful projects that showcase what becomes possible when inference is no longer the bottleneck. Think real-time applications, agentic workflows, or entirely new user experiences powered by world-record inference performance.

The winning team will receive Keychron K2 HE Rapid Trigger Wireless Custom Mechanical Keyboards for each member of the team.

This year, we’re bringing Cohere’s most advanced capabilities to Hack the North. Our API now powers multimodal intelligence - AI that reads documents, interprets images, reasons across inputs, and takes action through agentic workflows. From an assistant that analyzes slide decks to an agent that chains tasks with live data, we want to see your boldest ideas that push what’s possible with Cohere.

Prizes
1st: $500 cash per member (max 4) + $4,000 Cohere Credits
2nd: $100 cash per member (max 4) + $2,000 Credits
3rd: $1,000 Credits

Bonus: $25 Credits for all hackers - register for your key, then enter code HackTheNorth2025.

Judging criteria: WOW factor, API integration, technical depth, originality.

This project will revisit the U.S. National CyberWatch Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (MACCDC) 2012 network traffic dataset. How would new tools and fresh ideas perform on this legacy dataset? Do you have an inquisitive detective mind? Do you have a cool idea for big data project? Or just curious to know more? Please join us on this exploration!

Build a SOTA Computer-Use Agent using Cua (https://github.com/trycua/cua), the open-source infrastructure and agent framework for controlling real desktop and browser environments.
Submissions are evaluated in HUD's OSWorld-Verified benchmarking environment. The top-scoring team earns a secured interview with a Y Combinator partner for the next batch.

Prizes:
1. Guaranteed YC partner interview
2. Feature on the Cua blog + social channels
3. Swag pack for each team member

Eligibility: To be considered for judging and prizes, sign up at https://www.trycua.com/hackathon

Teams will use the Databricks platform in their application with the Databricks Free Edition. Judging will be based on creative and effective use of the Databricks platform, as well as the overall project idea. The winning team will receive special Databricks swag and $150 Amazon Gift Card for each member (up to 4).

The Ethereum community has been focused on scaling to get transaction costs lower to make onchain apps more seamless to use more.

ETHGlobal will award 0.2 ETH, 0.1 ETH, and 0.05 ETH to the top three teams projects building with smart contract to enable a unique experience that is only possible onchain - requirements are to write a smart contract, and deploy to Ethereum or Ethereum L2 testnet, and directly interact with that contract on your backend or frontend.

Federato will be awarding $2,000 to the hacker with the best solution from this challenge!

Objective:
Design a next-generation underwriting dashboard that enables underwriters to quickly identify and
prioritize high-value, in-appetite submissions. This challenge offers participants an opportunity to
work on a real-world problem our Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team actively tackles, giving
them hands-on insight into Federato’s mission and technical challenges.

Problem Statement:
Reimagine the RiskOps landing page experience. The goal is to build a dashboard experience
that, upon user login, intelligently surfaces a curated set of submissions that are most aligned with
the carrier's appetite—enabling faster and more effective underwriting decisions.

Provided Resources:
1. Sample Dataset via API
2. Endpoint Documentation - Concise documentation covering field definitions and query usage.
3. $50 credit per team to make OpenAI API calls
4. Sample Appetite Guidelines - A set of underwriting guidelines based on fields in the provided data

Genesys Cloud offers a robust set of APIs (https://developer.genesys.cloud/) that let you build smarter, more empathetic customer experiences. From post-interaction surveys to real-time sentiment analysis and topic detection, you can create solutions that help businesses better understand and support their users.

Whether you're building a chatbot, assistant, or analytics tool, this is your chance to explore the power of customer experience technology. We are looking for creative and impactful uses of the Genesys Cloud APIs through thoughtful design and innovation.

The top project will receive a $1,000 gift card, shared among the team. Winners will be selected by Genesys experts. Our team will be available during the API workshop and throughout the weekend to support your project.

Start building with empathy, powered by Genesys.

At Graphite, we believe the best software comes from teams that move fast while raising the bar for code quality. Our AI-powered code review platform helps engineers ship cleaner code through smarter collaboration on top of git. With a modern interface, Graphite makes good engineering practices feel satisfying and effortless. Whether you're debugging solo or coordinating with teammates, great engineering habits make all the difference.

Prize Description
- NEW** AirPod Pros 3rd Gen (all team members)
- Free Graphite AI features (stay tuned!)

Eligibility & Judging Criteria
Build anything you want! We're looking for teams that excel in both technical execution and collaborative engineering practices:
- Technical Excellence: Build ambitious, well-architected solutions that demonstrate impressive depth and rigour
- Engineering Practices: Demonstrate great team development practices - Are you pushing changes incrementally? Is your work easy to understand? Are you catching bugs in review before merging?

Show us what happens when great engineers work as one unified force!

$500 credit in Groq swag store

Martian (withmartian.com) provides an LLM Routing service that lowers the cost of token generation while maintaining output quality. Our Code Router matches or exceeds flagship code generation models by routing your request to the model best able to answer your prompt. And our gateway lowers costs for calling any other model from our list of over 100 closed- and open-source models from every major provider (and many small and independent ones).

We are offering $2000 in gift cards and $2000 in free Martian API credits to the team that uses Martian LLM Routing or the Martian Code Router in the most interesting, inspiring, or creative way. If you want to compete for this prize, come to the Martian API Workshop or visit our table to get free credits for the duration of the Hackathon.

QNX is awarding two prizes: one for the best QNX + hardware project and one for the best QNX + software-only project. This is a great opportunity to demonstrate your embedded development skills while gaining experience with an industry-leading embedded realtime OS! Here are some thought prompts, but please take these and think outside the box!
Can you make something that moves and accomplishes a goal?
Can you prototype an industrial control system?
Can you prototype a hardware solution to a real-world problem?
Can you create an entertaining game or physical challenge?
Can you port an open-source Linux utility or library to QNX and show a running demo?
Can you create an interesting prototype dashboard for industrial control or automation?
Can you create a game or some other useful UI running on QNX? (Available frameworks include QT, GTK, etc, plus core QNX Screen API.)

RBC InvestEase is an innovative investment platform that's making it easy for Canadians to start investing with confidence. In this challenge, we invite you to unleash your creativity and build a solution that helps students achieve their life goals and milestones by investing early and wisely.

Using RBC InvestEase, design a product that empowers students to take control of their financial goals. Whether it’s saving for their first car or booking that dream graduation trip, we want you to get creative and show us how you can make investing accessible, fun, and rewarding!

Students who submit their projects will have the chance to win exclusive prizes, so be sure to invest your time so you don’t miss out!

Prizes:
1st Place - $1200.00
2nd Place - $800.00

Build a financial service MVP that leverages the XRP Ledger's core features to solve a real-world problem. We're seeking innovative solutions focusing on payments, Real-World Asset (RWA) tokenization, RLUSD integration, or decentralized identity (DID).

What does success look like? What are possible features that we are looking for? A successful project will solve a real-world financial problem using XRPL. Features could include:
- RLUSD-based apps
- DID-integrated fintech identity flows
- SDKs for other developers to easily integrate XRPL features like RLUSD, escrows, and DIDs into their app
- Payment apps, microfinance, Real-World Asset (RWA) Tokenization

To compete, you must submit a working, testable MVP that is publicly available on GitHub with a detailed README. Two winning projects will be awarded a track prize: $500 for 1st & $250 for 2nd, with an additional $250 bounty for the best developer feedback. Show us how you can use the XRPL to innovate in DeFi!

To qualify for this award, your team must build a system that leverages large language models to operate on real-world, messy data and take meaningful actions. More specifically, qualifying teams must build agents that can handle unstructured information, incomplete datasets, conflicting sources, or noisy data - the kind of messy reality that exists in customer databases, support tickets, financial records, or operational systems. Teams should demonstrate techniques like data cleaning and validation, multi-source resolution, intelligent error handling, or robust decision-making under uncertainty.

Teams will be judged on technical complexity, creativity, how well the system handles real-world messiness, and practical utility. Show us agents that don't just work in clean demos, but can actually operate in the chaotic data environments that businesses deal with every day. We will award 2 prizes: $10K for top and $2K for second place.

Build AI solutions that make commerce better for everyone.

At Shopify, we see AI fundamentally transforming how commerce happens across physical stores, online shops, social selling, and beyond.

We're looking for the unexpected—the stuff that makes us say "wait, that's possible?" Build technical innovations that challenge what we think AI can do for entrepreneurs and unlock new possibilities for merchants everywhere.

From AI-powered merchant superpowers to workflow automation, from commerce intelligence to customer experience enhancements—show us where your creativity takes you when you apply AI to the commerce ecosystem.

Optional: Leverage Shopify's ecosystem (Shopify APIs, Remix framework, Polaris design system) to accelerate your build.

Prizes: ShopCash ($500 per team member), Shopify Keyboards, Meta Ray-Bans

Build something that makes merchants' lives easier or their customers happier. We've got the infinite commerce playground, you bring the AI magic.

The Challenge: With the latest Spectacles OS update introducing experimental Bluetooth HID game controller support, your challenge is to create a compelling and innovative AR experience that reimagines how users interact with augmented reality.
The Mission:
Design and build a Spectacles Lens that uses a Bluetooth-enabled game controller (like an Xbox Series X/S) as the primary input mechanism. Your project should seamlessly blend the physical controls of the game controller with the Spectacles' AR capabilities.

OR

Generative 3D Objects :art:
The Challenge: Develop a Lens that leverages the new Snap3D API to generate high-quality 3D objects on the fly within an AR experience.
The Mission: Your project should demonstrate the creative potential of real-time 3D object generation. The Lens could be a creative tool, a collaborative experience, or a game that relies on dynamically created 3D assets.

Prizes (each team member gets):
1st: Spectacles
2nd: Nintendo Switch
3rd: Speakers

Build innovative consumer payment and finance applications using Solana Pay and Token-2022 extensions. We're seeking solutions that push boundaries - create a Stripe-like API for Solana enabling merchants to accept payments seamlessly, extend the Solana Pay protocol with subscription-like features using token delegation or streaming payments, or build exotic financial instruments tokenizing real-world assets (RWAs) for consumer access.
Leverage Token-2022 extensions: use transfer fees for automatic revenue sharing, interest-bearing tokens for yield-generating wallets, confidential transfers for privacy-preserving payments, or permanent delegate for managed investment accounts. Ideas include tokenized invoice financing, micro-investment platforms for RWAs, programmable cashback systems, decentralized BNPL services, or payment orchestration APIs.
Your solution should make innovative financial products accessible to everyday consumers while showcasing capabilities unique to Solana. We'll evaluate based on technical innovation, practical utility, developer experience (for API submissions), user experience, and creative use of Solana's payment infrastructure. Winners receive grants for continued development.

Students will compete to create the most innovative applications of voice AI technology using VAPI. Participants will showcase their creativity, technical skills, and problem-solving abilities as they build impactful voice-powered solutions. The top teams will win VAPI credits and exclusive swag.

Prize tracks:

1. Best Voice-Powered App

2. Best Multi-Modal Agent

3. Most Creative Use of Voice AI

All winners will receive: 500 Vapi credits and Vapi swag bag with AirPods.

Introduction
Build a hack that focuses on improving the developer experience in some meaningful way - this could be tackling any part of the development lifecycle (creating, modifying or testing software)!

Prize description
Keychron keyboards for each member of the team.

Eligibility
No API requirements for this prize! You do not need to use Warp, but we'd love for you to try it out to build this!

Judging Criteria
Does the project improve the developer experience?
- Wow factor: Does the project stand out?
- Technical difficulty: How technically complex is the project?
- Originality: Is the project new or unique?
- Design: Is the project easy to use and polished?

Note that many developer tools may not have traditional GUIs - we are referring to all relevant aspects of UI/UX design here, there's no need to add a GUI for the sake of adding one!

Windsurf will recognize the teams that create the most creative and impactful project while fully showcasing the capabilities of the Windsurf AI-assisted IDE. As the first AI-native IDE, Windsurf is designed to keep developers in flow by combining intelligent code assistance, natural-language commands, and external tool calling via MCPs.
Grand Prize – 1st Place (1 Team)
1 year of Windsurf Pro (per teammate)
5,000 credits (per teammate)

Runner-up Prize – 2nd & 3rd Place (2 Teams)
6 months of Windsurf Pro (per teammate)
2,500 credits (per teammate)

Y Combinator is an accelerator built by and for builders. Four times a year, we fund and support early-stage startups, giving them resources, mentorship, and a network of peers who’ve faced the same challenges. Companies like Airbnb, Stripe, and Coinbase all started with YC, but what excites us the most are the young technical founders chasing bold ideas today. We back founders at the very beginning and help them turn their ideas into successful companies. If you’re hacking this weekend and wondering ‘what if this became real?’, that’s exactly the kind of spark we want to support.

Prize Description:
The best 3 teams will receive $2,000 and be guaranteed a YC interview for an upcoming batch.

Eligibility:
Functional project that has the potential to become a $B company

Judging Criteria:
Potential for growth and impact
Unique insights

It’s time to push the boundaries of what's possible with AI using Google Gemini. Check out the Gemini API to build AI-powered apps that make your friends say WHOA. So, what can Gemini do for your hackathon project?

• Understand language like a human and build a chatbot that gives personalized
• Analyze info like a supercomputer and create an app that summarizes complex research
• Generate creative content like code, scripts, music, and more

Think of the possibilities… what will you build with the Google Gemini API this weekend?

The winning team will receive mechanical keyboards!

MongoDB Atlas takes the leading modern database and makes it accessible in the cloud! Get started with a $50 credit for students (https://mlh.link/mongodb) or sign up for the Atlas free forever tier (https://mlh.link/mongodb-free, no credit card required). Along with a suite of services and functionalities, you'll have everything you need to manage all of your data, and you can get a headstart with free resources from MongoDB University! Build a hack using MongoDB Atlas for a chance to win a M5GO IoT Starter Kit for you and each member of your team.

Auth0 wants your applications to be secure! Why spend hours building features like social sign-in, Multi-Factor Authentication, and passwordless log-in when you can enable them through Auth0 straight out of the box? Auth0 is free to try, doesn’t require a credit card, and allows for up to 7,000 free active users and unlimited log-ins. Make your new account today and use any of the Auth0 APIs for a chance to win a pair of wireless headphones for you and each member of your team!

Cloudflare is one of the world’s largest networks enabling hackers like you to build, deploy, and deliver trusted applications, no matter where you are! With Cloudflare, you’ll have all the building blocks to create a full-stack application; from C3 (create Cloudflare command line) instance deployment to object storage. You can even run GenAI (LLMs, text to image, Voice to text etc..) in the cloud and leverage your AI functionality via API requests using Cloudlfare’s Workers AI! Enjoy Cloudflare’s generous free tier to get started at no cost! This weekend, we want you to build an AI Application utilizing Cloudflare’s numerous services for a chance to win Arduino Kits for you and your team!